Writing Courses

Writing on Wealth and Power
K30.1047 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 Nettie Jones

Part of the story that Americans tell themselves about themselves has to do with the Horatio Alger tales about how talent, hard work and a little luck yields success, money, status, fame and power.  Going from “rags to riches” in the span of one generation has thus become part of how we define the American dream—even as that dream recedes further and further away from the grasp of most citizens. Using autobiographies such as Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father; Frank Kofsky’s Black Music, White Business; and classic sociological works such as C. Wright Mill's The Power Elite; this writing seminar focuses on researching and writing fiction and non-fiction about “making it in America.” Students will write experiential, narrative, and academic essays on the economic power of the men and women who have achieved or inherited it. We will also devote time in the class to discussing editing, and revising.

Writing About Film
K30.1070     4 CR      F 12:30-3:15 Christopher Bram

Writing about movies is more than just issuing thumbs-up, thumbs-down judgments. In this class you will learn how to discuss a film's meaning, style, and content in ways that can interest even people who disagree with you. Good criticism should be as descriptive, and thought-provoking as the best fiction. You will explore some of the many different ways there are to write about cinema by reading such critics as James Agee, Pauline Kael, James Baldwin, Molly Haskell, and others. Screenings will occur outside of class, and will sometimes be assigned movies and other times movies chosen by the student. You will write (and rewrite) four papers ranging from brief movie reviews to a final eight-page essay.

The Art of the Personal Essay
K30.1304             4 CR         W 3:30-6:10          Sharon Friedman

The personal essay is a flexible genre that often incorporates rumination, memoir, narrative, portrait, anecdote, diatribe, scholarship, fantasy and moral philosophy. The title of Montaigne’s Essais (“attempts"), published in 1580, suggests the tentative and exploratory nature of this form as well as its freedom. The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy—the sharing of the writer’s observations and reflections with a reader, establishing a dialogue on subjects that range from the mundane to autobiographical and political meditations to reflections on abstract concepts and moral dilemmas. Style, shape, and intellectual depth lend the personal essay its drama, charm, and its ability to provoke thought. In this course, we will read and write personal essays that explore “persona,” “tone,” and “voice” in dialogue with concepts such as “the self,” “personal identity,” and “sincerity.” Readings may include essays by Seneca, Michel de Montaigne, Charles Lamb, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Wole Soyinka, Natalia Ginsburg, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Gloria Anzaldua.

Only Connect: Strategies for Writing
K30.1317 4 CR F 11:00-1:45 Ed Park

The late W.G. Sebald perfected a sublime art of connection—teasing out associations between ancient snapshots, newspaper clippings, and the words of others. His elegantly haunting books (which blurred novel, history, and memoir) couldn’t be more different from the typical posts that proliferate in the so-called blogosphere. Yet blogging, with its hyperlinks and screen-grabs, calls upon a magpie instinct that Sebald and other illustrious writers would instantly recognize. This course takes students on a tour of writing methods as old as The Anatomy of Melancholy and as current as Gawker, imparting a ravenous approach to composition useful for work in any genre: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and the borderlands of our virtual reality. Classes will focus on the use of images in text, the cento, the footnote, the double-jointed review, and more. Assignments include brief weekly “connections” reports, the regular maintenance of a blog, and a final paper. Readings include works by Borges, Barthelme, Nicholson Baker, Harry Stephen Keeler, Raymond Roussel, Lawrence Weschler, Carole Maso, Eliot Weinberger, Maureen Howard, and others.

Travel Writing
K30.1321 4 CR F 11:00-1:45 Susan Brownmiller

A sense of place, dialogue and dialect, the creation of a narrative through a sequence of anecdote: these are some of the particular demands in travel writing. Students will be required to take a few short trips in the New York area in order to experience an ethnic neighborhood or a cultural milieu that is not familiar to them. When writing their pieces they will practice the literary skills that convey adventure and sensory impressions while incorporating a fair amount of factual information and historical background. They will look for the unique, revealing detail, and learn to exploit the value of the unexpected encounter. They will discover that there are many ways to write about a journey, and many different reasons to read a travel story. Texts for this class are Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar; M.F.K. Fisher, Two Towns in Provence; and pertinent magazine pieces.

Writing the Fragment
K30.1329   4 CR     TR 3:30-4:45   Victoria Blythe

This writing seminar will explore the fragment as a literary genre and as a modality for literary production.  Our engagement with the fragment will focus on interruption as a force for generating writing, a dynamic that leaves in its wake literary debris to be collected and recouped.  Revisiting our own literary scenes of destruction we will develop a writing technique based on bricolage.  Using the writing workshop as a literary archeological dig we will learn to recognize our usable fragments, to reconfigure and recontextualize them into revitalized works. (Students will bring fragments from their own work to the project.)  We will look at some famous literary fragments such as the classic “Anaximander Fragment” and the remains of Sappho’s odes on love.  Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” and selections from Benjamin’s monumental bricolage-work will figure in our itinerary among the ruins. Theoretical writings may include Said's “Beginnings” and Blanchot's “Writing the Disaster.”  Students will revisit and redeploy their own literary fragments and will also work within the genre of the “intentional fragment.”

Writing the Family
K30.1333             4 CR         W 6:20-9:00          Cris Beam

Many of us want to write memoirs, but families—good or bad—are loaded territory. How do we navigate wisely? In this class we’ll look at writers who have done it, such as James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, Vivian Gornick, Richard Rodriguez, and Sister Souljah,  to trace their fault lines and unearth their strategies for remaining faithful to their readers while truthful to their lived experience. We’ll look at issues of voice and point of view, and how to gain enough emotional distance from characters to make them both believable and three-dimensional. We’ll write and workshop several family scenes, building them into a few full-length stories or, if the student wishes, chapters for a larger work.  Readings may include Modern American Memoirs, edited by Annie Dillard and Cort Conley; Heaven’s Coast, Mark Doty; Name All the Animals, Alison Smith; The Women, Hilton Als; and An American Childhood, Annie Dillard.

Translation Practicum
K30.1425             4 CR        F 12:30-3:15          Scott Hightower

This introductory practicum will involve a weekly submission: a piece selected in an original global language and a draft of that same piece brought into English. Fluency is not required, but student should have working knowledge of a language other than English. Some genres explored may include recipes, directions, obituaries, short prose pieces, and poems.  What are the challenges and limits of translation? What may be gained? What may be lost?  Students writing samples will be submitted, read, and discussed weekly. Handouts of  samples will feature a piece in its original language and then versions of it in translation. 

Writing Short Comedy
K30.1505   4 CR      R 6:20-9:00    D.B. Gilles

This course introduces students to writing short humor, including political satire (The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Bill Maher), sketch humor (Saturday Night Live, Mad TV, Kids In The Hall), monologues (David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel), observational humor (stand up comedy), parody (essays, think pieces, video, Youtube) and improvisation. Students will learn the difference between a sketch and a bit, how to create memorable original characters, how to write a joke from premise to payoff and where to find humor. Students will experiment with writing a different specific piece each week, possibly including a parody of a TV commercial, fake news stories à la The Onion, a Letterman Top 10 list, monologue jokes for a talk-show host, a humorous piece for Youtube, and a humorous Op-Ed piece for The New York Times.

Creating Narrative Effects: Better Storytelling Through Craft
K30.1520             4 CR         W 9:30-12:15        Meera Nair

Good writing is seamless and smooth, skillfully persuading us of the authenticity of the time and place and the emotional landscape of the characters.  We are shown only what needs to be illuminated, carried forward at the right speed, kept at arm’s length sometimes and clasped close at other times. Great stories or novels work at every level because the writer has mastered the craft of fiction. This class will examine those elements of craft that lead to better storytelling—ingenious use of point of view, narrative voice, pacing, meaningful description and telling detail, effective dialogue and many more. We will read great stories illustrating these aspects of craft, and write stories which we will workshop. Possible text: The Story and Its Writer : An Introduction to Short Fiction edited by Ann Charters.

Crafting Short Fiction From the Sentence Up
K30.1537 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Steven Rinehart

This class explores the craft of writing, starting with the sentence and ending with the scene. Half of each class is devoted to craft exercises and the remaining half to a traditional workshop approach to discussing student submissions. By the end of the semester we’ll be able to talk intelligently about some of the "micro" parts of a short story or novel, giving the students some practical tools for editing those parts.

Reading and Writing the Short Story
K30.1540 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Carol Zoref

This short story workshop is designed for the writer who believes that there is as much to be learned from reading the works of others as from writing their own stories. We will devote a portion of each class to discussions of master stories, as well as to careful readings and discussions of stories by the members of the workshop. Exercises will be assigned each week as a way of developing and reinforcing each writer’s relationship to literary craft. Each writer will also present their own stories in class. Workshop members are required to actively participate in classroom critiques.

Fiction Writing
K30.1550 4 CR W 3:30-6:10  Lara Vapnyar

This course provides students interested in writing fiction an opportunity to explore (and practice) various forms of fiction—short story, flash fiction, novel, and graphic novel—in a workshop environment. The main objective of the course is to help students develop their individual styles and voices and to make them aware of the various techniques available to them. Every aspect of the craft of writing fiction is examined: point of view, narrative voice, plot, tension, time, sequence, crisis, resolution, dialogue, symbolism, etc. Students are taught to look at texts from the unique perspective of a fellow writer and encouraged to become part of a community of writers where they will work with their peers in a safe, honest and considerate environment. Students will present their own fiction, respond to the writings of others, and pose questions about literature, editing, and publishing. The workshop group and instructor provide a supportive audience that listens and responds to the work of each member. Students will be required to write either two short stories, or a short story and a chapter from a novel, or a short story and several pieces of flash fiction.  The reading assignments will include selections from old and contemporary authors such as Chekhov, Joyce, Borges, Alice Munro, George Saunders, Edward P. Jones, Junot Diaz, Marjane Satrapi.

Advanced Fiction Writing
K30.1555 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Dave King
Prerequisite K30.1550 or V39.0815 or V39.0816 or V39.0820. 

Good writing often depends on the balance of concrete and abstract, and this workshop course will likewise balance inquiries into fiction's grander theoretical questions with more mechanical considerations, such as how to apply dialogue, insert flashback material, and so on. Assignments will include outside essays and stories as well as occasional short exercises, but our true focus will be on student writing. Participants will be asked to read each others' work rigorously, with an eye to precision and plausibility, but also with the generous understanding that fiction itself has many goals, and that the colleague across the table may be on to something ingenious and inspired, even while the work itself is still in development.

The Art and Craft of Poetry
K30.1560/01 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Emily Fragos

K30.1560/02 4 CR MW 3:30-4:45 Stacy Pies

In this workshop poets will focus on the foundations and intricate dynamics of poetry as a writer’s process and on poetry as a two-headed tradition, having an oral tradition and a written tradition. A brief review will cover some of poetry’s history including metric and syllabic measures of writing from the Anglo-Saxon to modern free verse. A weekly reading of a poem by each poet in the circle will serve as point of departure for discussions of the relationships of craft and expression.

Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Maura Donnelly

This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult literacy and English as a second language programs with an academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current issues of basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing oral English or mentors at such institutions as the University Settlement, International Rescue Committee, and Fortune Society. In class they will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic skills” U.S. adults now need, which adults lack these skills and why, the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy, the instructional approaches developed for adults, and the steps that might be taken to build support for high-quality, adult basic-skills programs. Throughout the course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings may include Auerbach's Making Meaning, Making Change; Horton and Freire's We Make the Road by Walking; and the journals Focus on Basics and The Change Agent.

Fiction Writing
K80.2550 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Chris Spain
Graduate course open to advanced undergraduates (juniors and seniors) with permission of the instructor (clspain@msn.com).

The aim of this course is to fathom why fiction works when it works, and why it doesn’t when it doesn’t. We will attempt to teach ourselves to read like writers, so we can learn from those who have come before, so we can began to write like writers. We will engage all the elements that give a fiction a chance at success—obsession, seduction, evoking of the senses, the removal of filters, scene and summary, theatre of the mind, et cetera. Students—and the teacher—will turn in three first drafts of fiction, each 10-14 pages long, to be critiqued in a workshop setting. The critiques will be rigorous but constructive; no nastiness allowed. We will also complete short, extemporaneous, writing exercises. Readings taken from The New Yorker, Zoetrope, and others.